Social Media - A guide for researchers - ICT Digital Literacy

6. Final thoughts
This guide has shown you how researchers can use social media. We began by clarifying what is meant
by the term social media before exploring how social tools can be used as part of the traditional cycle
of academic research and publication. We then moved on to examine social tools that may be useful for
researchers. Finally we examined a range of strategies that researchers can use to deal with information
overload.
Social media are not presented here as a panacea for either the research community in general or
individual researchers. However, researchers who are active users of social media feel they offer
them benefits in their professional life. By speeding up communication and enabling new forms of
collaboration, social mediaalso have the potential to spark exciting new research, and to increase
productivity.
Whether the promise of social media is realised will depend on how the research community engages
with them. If they remain on the periphery of research culture their impact will stay limited. The social
nature of these tools means that they become more useful with every researcher who starts to use
them.
We hope this guide has answered some basic questions. But if you really want to understand what social
media can do for you and your research, you need to start experimenting.
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